Help with Starnet

[Carole]

I would like to be able to control the masses of tiny stars.  I have tried Straton and Annie's actions but they just seem to make a mess of the nebulae.

After several attempts I have finally managed to download Starnet to my laptop, (it won't install on the desktop). 

I got it initially to process a mono image and it processed 100% of the way through and then would not save the resulting tiff.  I am no Whizz with computers, but any idea why?  If you know I'd be grateful for an explanation in simple to understand terms please.

[Carole]

I think having read the README file on Starnet, that it won't work on some older computers:

If you try to run `run_rgb_starnet.bat` and see something like
'application could not start properly' that probably means that
your CPU is not supported. You can use program called CPU-Z to
see if your CPU supports AVX instructions.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dependencies. The code depends on C API of Tensorflow and libtiff.

    http://www.libtiff.org/
    https://www.tensorflow.org/install/lang_c

Make sure that tensorflow.dll, tiff.dll and starnet_weights.pb
are in the same directory as starnet++.exe or somewhere in $PATH

Huge thanks to Daniil Goncharov for his hello_tf_c_api project:

    https://github.com/Neargye/hello_tf_c_api
   
part of which was used in this project.

This is all gobbldegook to me, but since my computers are all reconditioned ones, I presume my computer is not up to the job.

I have taken a few screen shots of what I get when I look into my CPU if any-one can make any sense of them.

So I think I have answered my own question. I'll get Phil Bourke to take a look when we are all out of the Coronavirus social distancing problems.

Carole

[Carole]

I've got one more laptop to try it out on, but I don't hold much hope for that as it is also reconditioned and wouldn't even work with Polemaster, but might as well give it a try, nothing ventured and all that.

Carole 

[Mac]

search on your computer for the three files

tensorflow.dll
tiff.dll
startnet_weights.pb

when you find them make sure ALL of them are in the same directory as your start net folder,
If you cant find any of them, use google to find the three files on tinternet and then copy them over to the starnet folder.

Then try and run the program again.

Unluess your machine CPU is pre 2011 then your CPU should support it.

Mac.

[Carole]

Thanks Mac, I'll give that a try.
I know I definitely have a .dll file missing because it told me on one of the computers.

Carole

[Carole]

It seems I already have those files in the folder.

Carole

[Mac]

if you go to www.sysinternals.com and look for the file monitor software, install that and run it
It will show you EVERY program that is running and what files they are trying to access and where they are accessing the file.

Run that and then run your astro software, it will log everything, all you have to do is to then look through the logs and see what files are failing,

The beauty though is you can right click on the bits and use them as the filters, so you can just filter everything that failed.
ant then go from there,

Be warned, you need to stop the monitor before you do the searches otherwise it will just slow your pc down untill it stops.

You can also right click on the processes and either include ot exclude them from the log.

There is another piece of software which does all the Registry, which would be your final call to see whats happening,

If i get my PC up and running i'l get a screen shot and highlight the bits you need to use.

Mac.

[Carole]

Hmmm, that sounds a bit too complicated for me to cope with, I have saved the info and next time I can get my PC man over I will add it to the list of things for him to sort out.

Thanks anyway Mac

Carole

[RobertM]

I managed to get Starnet running with my NVidia graphics card.  I'll do some comparisons but performance is down to both the number of CUDA cores and graphics memory.  I bought a GeForce GTX 1050ti a few years ago, it wasn't exactly high spec then (4GB 768 cores), with the idea that perhaps PixInsight might adopt graphics card processing - well step forward a few years and it hasn't but StarNet++ can be set up to do so.  I set it running on a mono image last night... a few hours later and it had finished.  I must admit I was expecting it to fly rather than take a few hours so I'm not quite sure this exercise can quite be considered a success.  I'm sure if you have something like a 1070 or 1080 class graphics card then it'll run rapido though beware of the power required to drive those cards !

Will try some more tests tonight if I can bear the extra heat generated !

Instructions for doing all this are on the web and it's quite easy to do.

Note that this was just a 'techie' exercise, I've not used it on any of my images so far.

Update: May be I gave it too much to chew on before as I've just produced a starless mono image 3124 x 2088 f32 in about 20 seconds (13 secs on the GPU) with 'Stride' set to 128.  With Stride set to 64 the time goes to ~50 seconds and set to 32 it goes to 240 seconds.

Robert

[Roberto]

Robert

See here for CUDA optimisation:  https://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-speed-up-starnet-as-pi-module-on-nvidia-gpus-with-cuda-on-windows.14882/#post-90496  I got this running on my new laptop and it's great.

It takes 35 seconds to run a 6k picture through StarNet ++ instead of almost 5 minutes.

Roberto

[RobertM]

Not seen that thread but on the other hand it was very easy to get working.  Whether I will use it or not is another matter - it has generated what look like paw prints on my test image.

Robert

[Carole]

Instructions for doing all this are on the web and it's quite easy to do.

I followed all the instructions, but I don't think my second hand computers are capable unfortunately.

I have Straton and a programme in Actions that will remove stars, but I don't like the results, they leave tiny holes where the stars use to be.  From what I have seen Starnet seems to do a better job.

I also found a Photoshop tutorial on how to remove stars in Photoshop, but my version of Photoshop is an older version and doesn't have the required things in the drop down menu's. 

Think I will shop around for a later version of photoshop.  I have CS3 and apart from this it does everything else I need.

Carole   

[The Thing]

Not seen that thread but on the other hand it was very easy to get working.  Whether I will use it or not is another matter - it has generated what look like paw prints on my test image.

Robert

Exactly my be experience. I am going be to try an image outside the milky way with fewer stars. I suspect it may work better for small fovs with fewer stars - less paw prints.